Given the devisiveness of Chris Claremont’s early 2000’s “X-treme X-Men” series, the title brings a lot of baggage along with it. But anyone with positive or negative feelings about that title should disregard them right now – this is certainly not that book. The real question is whether Greg Pak’s multiverse-spanning new series is good enough to survive no matter what it’s called…
As a note, I’m about to spoil a surprise or two from the first few pages. Nothing beyond that.
Written by Greg Pak
Illustrated by Stephen Segovia– Spinning out of the pages of ASTONISHING X-MEN!
– Travel the multiverse with Captain Howlett, Kid Nightcrawler, and Emmeline Frost
– Which X-Men will be lost between dimensions…with no guaranteed way home?
The issue opens on Kid Nightcrawler operating a connective device linking the heads of many alternate versions of Charles Xavier. Their collective aim is to teleport the population and structures of a dying world to an apparently uninhabited planet. They succeed in spectacular fashion, but the celebration is short-lived as they have also apparently set off a rift in the multiverse that will be driving the cast to proactively take on the consequences over the course of the series. The greatest successes of this issue are in the high-concept scenes like this. Stephen Segovia renders the sequence beautifully and the image of Nightcrawler with the Professor X heads surrounding him is not one I will soon forget. There are a couple of pure sci-fi scenes like this where Pak and Segovia really shine.
Alternate universe stories tend to be about taking characters and worlds that we know and love and spinning them in a variety of surprising ways. Writers enjoy taking characters that we’re familiar with and putting them in unfamiliar situations that often operate outside of the “laws” of the universe that we’re used to seeing them in. Because there are no laws, the characters must be your anchor. We have to want to follow these characters into the unknown. And this is where “X-treme X-Men” leaves the reader just a little bit wanting.
Though you may or may not have seen the characters of Capt. James Howlett, Emmeline Frost-Summers, and Kurt Waggoner in Pak’s short stint on “Astonishing X-Men,” they’ll be mainstays in this book. Each of them is a slight but obvious variation on original X-Men characters; however, at this point they are generally speaking and acting as the characters that they are supposed to be variations on. Truth be told, it’s tough to read them as anything but the characters they are spun out of. Perhaps the reliable Pak will find some unique aspects to these characters, but the first issue definitely left them in the cold in favor of the character that seems to be the focus of this book: Dazzler. Dazzler gets pulled into a dimensional rift and the aforementioned alt-X-Men go in after her. From there, the story is set as they have forced to make right the changes caused by the many Xaviers and eventually get back home.
Having read the first issue, “X-treme X-Men” is going to live and die by the Dazzler character. The first time we see her, she’s manipulating the concert of her own male-in-drag impersonator. The crowd loves it, somehow. She catches up with her new session guitarist/sort-of-boyfriend and the two of them share a couple pages of awkward banter. The dialogue here is supposed to be a bit of nerves and a bit flirtacious, but it comes off a little cheesier instead. (Not as cheesy as her issue #1 battle-cry: “This B-side totally rocks!”)
It doesn’t help that Segovia’s art doesn’t elevate the script on these low-key scenes either. His style appears to involve a lot of canted angles and a penchant for lots of apparent motion in the panels. While this works well for the sprawling and imaginative sci-fi scenes, it does nothing for the slice-of-life aspects of the book. One begins to notice the strange faces and postures of the characters when they aren’t busy launching themselves into battle.
I don’t think that there is any such thing as a bad character, and Dazzler is already proving herself to be some kind of asset to this group, but she is definitely the main character of this story. Pak and Segovia embrace the inherent ridiculousness of her pop-star character with goofy outfits and cheesy dialogue that just didn’t work for me. If you’re not a Dazzler fan, this issue won’t do anything to change your mind. And the wonderful high science concepts were too few and far between.
Final Verdict: 5.0 – Dazzler fan? Sure, give it a try. Everyone else, borrow the first issue from your Dazzler-fan friend. Or don’t.
